27 The Joy of the Marty homelands—for Damien, imprisonment in a colony of lepers, to bring to his fellow men healing in body and soul. Sometimes the father of lies is not so bloody. Then our martyrdom may be the laughter and scorn of the world; for who but a fool would live in the alleys of Calcutta, or who but someone obsessed and mad would shut himself up in a cave in Egypt, to spend his life in prayer? But in the end the same question is posed to everyone. And it is a question the world never has really understood. The world may kill, and often does kill, for glory or wealth or ambition or vengeance or fear. But to set your very life on the line for truth, to be slaughtered like a lamb for truth—well, what the pagan world got from Socrates, the history of the Church has gotten from hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women and even children, and in our supposedly enlightened time more than ever. These bear witness to the world, against the world, for the sake of the world, and the world, because its ways are evil, stops up its ears against the truth that would set it free. None of this could ever come to pass, except by faith in the ultimate martyr, the God who will stand witness for us. “Martyro ego,” says the Lord to John at the end of his mysterious and resplendent vision: He shall bear witness to all who hear the words of truth.
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